Prisoners Convert To Islam For Jail Perks Religion Essay

inmates are converting to Islam in order to gain perks and the protection of powerful Muslim gangs, the Chief Inspector of Prisons warns today.

Dame Anne Owers says that some convicted criminals are taking up the religion in jail to receive benefits only available to practising Muslims.

The number of Muslim prisoners has risen dramatically since the mid-1990s - from 2,513 in 1994, or 5 per cent of the population, to 9,795 in 2008, or 11 per cent. Staff at top-security prisons and youth jails have raised concerns about the intimidation of non-Muslims and possible forced conversions.

Dame Anne's report, Muslim Prisoners' Experiences, published today, says that, although several high-profile terrorists have been jailed recently, fewer than 1 in 100 Muslim inmates have been convicted of terrorism.

She says that prison staff are suspicious about those practising or converting to the faith and warns that treating Muslim inmates as potential or actual extremists risks radicalising them. The report says: "Many Muslim prisoners stressed the positive and rehabilitative role that Islam played in their lives, and the calm that religious observance could induce in a stressed prison environment. This was in marked contrast to the suspicion that religious observance, and particularly conversion or reversion, tended to produce among staff."

All prisons offer a halal menu, which some inmates see as better than the usual choices. Muslims are excused from work and education while attending Friday prayers. Some converts, who are known as "convenience Muslims", admitted that they had changed faith because they got more time out of the cells to go to Friday prayers. One quoted in the report said: "Food good too, initially this is what converted me."

In some of the most secure jails, the size of the Muslim population is well above average. Two years ago, Muslim inmates accounted for a third of prisoners in Whitemoor, Cambridgeshire, and a quarter of inmates in Long Lartin in Worcestershire.

The report says that inmates converted after learning about Islam from other inmates or their family, to obtain support and protection in a group with a powerful identity and for material advantages. One inmate quoted in the report said: "I've got loads of close brothers here. They share with you, we look out for each other."

Muslim prisoners tended to report more negatively on their prison experience and were also more likely to fear for their own safety or complain of problems in their relations with staff. In high-security prisons, three-quarters of Muslims said they felt unsafe.

Dame Anne said that unless staff engaged effectively with them there was "a real risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that the prison experience will create or entrench alienation and disaffection, so that prisons release into the community young men who are more likely to offend, or even embrace extremism".

Tom Robson, vice-chairman of the Prison Officers' Association, said that some impressionable prisoners were converting because they wanted status and protection. "What we have got at the moment is an upward trend," he said. "It is worrying."

Phil Wheatley, director-general of the National Offender Management Service, said: "Our clear policy is that all prisoners are treated with respect and decency, recognising the diverse needs of a complex prison population, and that the legitimate practice of faith in prison is supported."

Dame Anne's study was based on 85 jail inspection reports and in-depth interviews with 164 Muslim prisoners in eight jails. It follows reports of Muslim inmates seeking to assert their authority on the wings of prisons.

2

Israel accuses former US Marine on aid mission of terrorist links

A former US Marine is at the centre of Israel's response to the outrage caused by its raid on a Gaza-bound aid boat after it listed him as one of five people on board with terrorist links.

Ken O'Keefe, 40, who lives in London, toldÂ The TimesÂ that he had met Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader, and said that he supported the organisation's "right to violent resistance".

He also said that he had helped to subdue two Israeli commandos after leaders of the Turkish Islamic IHH charity enacted a plan to defend the boat.

The words inked into the right hand of the 1991 Gulf War veteran - "US Expatriot, 01-03-01, RIP" - mark the date that he renounced his US citizenship after what he called a taste of military injustice. Mr O'Keefe said that he was subjected to institutional bullying in the US Marine Corps after he went over the head of his commanding officer to report an unspecified infraction.

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In 2003 he moved to London, took Irish citizenship and began to visit Gaza and the West Bank. He said that he was granted honorary citizenship in the Palestinian territories.

He said that in the early hours of last Monday, when it became apparent that Israeli naval forces were preparing to board the ship, the IHH leadership issued a call to defend the ship as part of a pre-arranged plan. He was posted at the back of the boat to repel boarders.

"We were told that if they got on the ship we should arrest them," Mr O'Keefe said. When he heard shots from the roof where commandos had descended from helicopters he rushed towards the gunfire, meeting on the way a soldier struggling with activists.

"By this time I had already seen one person dead. We subdued the soldier. He was struggling; he was trying to get to his weapon. I had no doubt that if he got to it before I did I'd be dead."

After taking the commando's handgun he took the bullets out and hid it to keep as evidence for a future trial, he said. He also helped to wrest an assault rifle from another commando.

He said: "We applied the principles of defending humanitarian cargo and defending one's honour, instead of simply handing over the cargo, most of which would have not made it."

Asked if the nine deaths had been worth it, he said: "I don't see how there can be any question of that. The situation of the Palestinians is a problem which cuts to the heart of injustice all around the world."

Mr O'Keefe said that he had spent 20 days in an Israeli prison in 2004 after trying to cross from an Israeli settlement in Gaza into Palestinian territory. During this time he admitted in interrogation to meeting the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and other Palestinian groups that Israel would regard as terrorists while trying to broker his own peace initiative. He denied helping to train terroris

3:

Barack Obama defends handling of BP oil spill

Barack Obama today defended his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, saying he had been talking closely with experts and officials about the environmental disaster "so I know whose ass to kick", and called for BP to pay compensation.

Mr Obama, who has been widely criticised for not engaging passionately enough on the spill, said he has talked to a variety of experts in addition to the fishermen and other Gulf Coast locals during his three trips to the area, most recently last Friday.

"I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answer so I know whose ass to kick," Mr Obama said in an interview with the NBC News Today program, which is set to air later this morning.

The US President also said he believes British energy giant BP should pay compensation for those affected by the crisis that began with the April 20 explosion on a BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers.

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"We also have to make sure that every single person that has been affected by this is properly compensated and made whole," Obama said.

BP is under political pressure to suspend dividend payments - which total $10.5 billion a year - after two US senators called on the company not to pay out to shareholders until the full costs for cleaning up the massive spill are known.

BP is due to announce its second quarter dividend and results on July 27.

On his third trip to the Louisiana Gulf Coast since the oil spill began, Mr Obama told reporters last week that BP should not be "nickel and diming" residents along the oil-stained Gulf coast over damage claims while spending billions in shareholder dividends.

Mr Obama, who has repeatedly vowed to hold the company accountable for the disaster and make sure that it foots the bill, has called on BP to pay damage claims expeditiously.

Mr Obama also attacked BP's British CEO Tony Hayward, who previously dismissed the magnitude of the oil spill, saying the Gulf was "a big ocean" and that "the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest".

"He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements," the President told the Today show.

Earlier, Mr Obama sought to reassure America that the Gulf Coast would "bounce back" from the worst oil spill in US history, but not without time, effort and reimbursement from BP.

Surrounded by Cabinet members, Mr Obama said that not only is he confident that the crisis will pass but also that the affected area "comes back even stronger than ever".

US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the US government's efforts in dealing with the oil spill tragedy, said yesterday that a cap on the damaged oil well is now keeping up to 462,000 gallons (1.75 million litres) of oil a day from leaking into the Gulf.

"This will be contained," Mr Obama asserted. "It may take some time, and it's going to take a whole lot of effort. There is going to be damage done to the Gulf Coast, and there is going to be economic damages that we've got to make sure BP is responsible for and compensates people for."

But, Obama added, "even if we are successful in containing some or much of the oil; the problem wouldn't be solved until relief wells reach the area of the damaged well in several months.

"What is clear is that the economic impact of this disaster is going to be substantial and it is going to be ongoing," Mr Obama said.

4:

This scares everybody - that we can't make it stop, says BP chief

With the failure of its latest attempt to stem the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, BP was running out of time, money and friends yesterday as it prepared another, even riskier, plan of attack.

"We failed to wrestle the beast to the ground," Bob Dudley, the company's managing director, said after BP admitted that the much vaunted "top kill" operation had not worked. President Obama called the news "as enraging as it is heartbreaking".

The disaster now threatens to become the second largest accidental oil spill in the world and could financially cripple the British oil company, whose engineers will now try a new method that, unless successful, risks spilling oil into the sea at an even greater rate.

BP will try to keep some of the oil out of the water by rerouting it into a tanker. The procedure will entail cutting the pipe, and the White House said that the flow of oil could increase by as much as 20 per cent. The attempt is likely to start today or Tuesday and take until the end of the week.

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The failure of the deep-sea recovery efforts has increased the likelihood that oil from the Macondo well will be still gushing into the sea in August, when a relief well to ease the pressure and cap the leak will be completed. This has left BP with options that it was reluctant to consider before.

The six-week-old spill is already the worst in US history but is now heading towards a more ignominious title. By August 2, three months after BP began drilling a secondary relief well, up to 2.2 million barrels (94 million gallons) of oil will have flooded into the Gulf. The estimate is based on figures released last week by the US Geological Survey, which used three methods to estimate that oil was escaping at between 12,000 and 25,000 barrels, or 504,000 and 1.05 million gallons, a day.

Five methods of stemming the leak or containing the oil have been tried; all have failed or been aborted. The list of options is dwindling, the odds in favour of success are slim and since the crisis began on April 20 about 40 million gallons of crude have fouled the waters, according to government figures.

"This scares everybody - the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far," said BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles.

In an interview on CNN, Mr Dudley said that he was "disappointed the oil is going to flow for a while", but added: "If we can contain the flow between now and August and keep it out of the ocean, that's also a good outcome. And then, if we can shut it off completely with a relief well, that's not a bad outcome compared to where we are today."

But such attempts at a brave face have gained little from the White House. During an appearance on the NBC programme Meet the Press, Carol Browner, Mr Obama's assistant on energy and climate change, suggested that until government agencies released figures last week the company had played down the leakage rate and that it may have had an ulterior motive for doing so, as it faces potentially bankrupting civil fines.

"BP has a financial interest in these numbers. They will pay a penalty based on the number of barrels \ per day," she said.

The world's largest accidental oil spill was the 1979 Ixtoc 1 disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, when an exploratory well blew out and defied even the expertise of the firefighter Red Adair before it was capped ten months later. A total of three million barrels of oil, or 126 million gallons, escaped.

BP's next attempt at a fix carries a high risk of the leak becoming more powerful. The pipe through which the oil is flowing is kinked and damaged, restricting the rate of escape. In cutting it to fit a capping device over the top - a procedure called the lower marine riser package cap - a more violent rush of oil could be released.

"If they can't get that valve on things will get much worse," said Professor Philip Johnson, an engineering expert at the University of Alabama.

John Hofmeister, a former president of Shell, complained that BP and the US Government were not doing enough to clean up the spill and did not seem open to new ideas.

"We are still relying on old technology," he said, claiming that supertankers capable of far more efficient operations were ready and waiting in the Middle East.

"The idea's been presented to the Coast Guard. This is where I'm concerned we've got 'NIH' - not invented here - syndrome."

News of the "top kill" failure, announced by Mr Suttles on Saturday night, crushed the hopes of Gulf Coast residents, who face economic disaster. Fishing and marine industries are severely hit and tourism is under threat.

5:

Israeli troops board aid ship bound for Gaza

Israeli naval forces boarded an Irish-owned ship bound for Gaza today, just five days after killing nine passengers in a bloody raid on a previous aid convoy.

The commandos boarded the ship "with the full compliance" of the crew and passengers without any of the violence that had marked the storming of the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara on Monday, Israeli officials said.

"Our forces boarded the boat and took control without meeting any resistance from the crew or the passengers. Everything took place without violence," a military spokeswoman said.

The MV Rachel Corrie, carrying 20 passengers and crew as well as humanitarian aid for Gaza, had ignored orders not to break the three-year blockade of the Palestinian enclave that has been enforced by Israel and Egypt.

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Once Israeli forces had taken control of the small vessel, they steered it towards the southern Israeli port of Ashdod, several hours sailing away.

The military said the goods would be transferred to Gaza through the land crossings it controls, although aid groups have complained that not all the items from previously-seized convoys had been delivered.

Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovitz, the chief Israeli military spokeswoman said Israeli commandos "didn't storm the ship - they boarded it with the agreement" of the people on board.

The passengers and crew, including Nobel Peace prize winner Mairead Maguire, were expected to be questioned and their identifies checked by Israeli officials before being deported, as happened with hundreds of people taken off the previous aid flotilla.

The Israeli vessels had earlier intercepted the ship around 35 miles (55 km) off the Gaza coast. Ms Maguire said the group would offer no resistance if Israeli forces boarded their ship. "We will sit down," she said. "They will probably arrest us ... But there will be no resistance."

The group had said in a statement they would let an international force, preferably United Nations inspectors, search the ship and certify the nature of its cargo before it proceeds to Gaza, to allay Israeli fears that weapons could be on board.

The 1,200 tonne ship, named after an American student crushed to death by a bulldozer in 2003 while protesting Israeli house demolitions in Gaza, had been expected in Gaza late this morning.

Israel's treatment of the activists will be closely watched around the world after the disastrous Israeli navy raid on a Gaza bound convoy on Monday which led to the deaths of nine people, mainly Turkish activists.

6:

Adidas Jabulani World Cup football 'is the most stable ever made

David James, England's goalkeeper, described it as dreadful, the Italian striker Giampaolo Pazzini labelled it a disaster and Brazil's Julio Cesar likened it to a "grocery store" football. But the British scientist behind the official World Cup ball has defended the adidas Jabulani as the most stable and precise football ever made.

If the ball goes off target more often it is not because it is unpredictable but because it travels 5 per cent faster, according to Andy Harland, a sports technologist at Loughborough University who led the aerodynamic testing and design of the football.

The ball's greater pace meant that small changes in the striking angle could translate into bigger differences in the final placement of the ball, he said yesterday. The effect was likely to be exaggerated at high altitudes, where balls travel even faster.

With experience, however, players may be able to use the additional sensitivity to their advantage, he added. "Footballers should be rewarded for their skill by a ball that responds uniformly," Dr Harland said. "The desire wasn't to flummox the players with unpredictable flight."

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The Jabulani - meaning "rejoice" in Zulu - has attracted a storm of criticism from strikers and goalkeepers since it was unveiled last month. After the United States' World Cup warm-up victory on Saturday, the team's goalkeeper, Tim Howard, was the latest to complain that the adidas ball was liable to fly off course. "What does it do? What doesn't it do would be a better question," he said. "It moves all over. If you hit five balls with the same striking motion you wouldn't get the same result."

However, robotic wind tunnel testing of the ball showed it to be significantly less prone to aerodynamic instabilities, according to the Loughborough University team. "I realise a number of players have made complaints," Dr Harland said. "But with the best will in the world, there isn't a player who can kick the same way twice. Our kicking robot can."

He added that, contrary to some reports, the ball was no lighter than those used at previous World Cups, as it had to comply with Fifa's official specifications. "Anyone who claims these balls are lighter really ought to get their kitchen scales out," he said.

"The standard weight of a football hasn't changed during the lifetime of any contemporary footballer."

The ball comprises eight thermally-bonded panels, down from 14 in the last World Cup. The panels are moulded from a polythene casing and ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) foam and surface of the ball is textured with grooves intended to improve the ball's aerodynamics and decrease "wobble". It is the first official World Cup ball not to feature hand-stitching.

Dr Harland also dismissed the notion that the ball had been designed specifically for the benefit of strikers and to the detriment of goalkeepers, as some have claimed. "Goalkeepers have a perception that technological progress isn't to their advantage, but the surface texture makes it easier for goalkeepers to grip," he said.

Thomas van Schaik, an adidas spokesman, predicted that the criticism would die down once the tournament began. "If you look back in history, there have always been criticisms about the ball before the World Cup but not so much afterwards, after you've seen great goals or great saves," he said.

"The ball is much more accurate, making the best players in the world even better. If they kick the ball they want it to go where they are aiming for and even the goalkeepers get a better idea of where the ball is going."

7:

Child abuse reports to be published

Full reports of official investigations into the most notorious cases of child abuse are to be published, ministers confirmed.

Children's minister Tim Loughton said the serious case reviews into the deaths of Baby P and Khyra Ishaq, as well as the cases of the Edlington brothers and Shannon Matthews, will be released.

In an interview with Children and Young People Now, Mr Loughton said: "When you read some of these reviews it become clear that a lot of fault can be laid at the door of other agencies.

"Yet it is always social workers who take the brunt of the criticism. Actually, this is a way of helping to restore some of the lost confidence in social workers."

The Tories had suggested before the election that they would look to publish the reviews of the worst cases of child abuse retrospectively.

Two serious case reviews were undertaken in the case of Baby Peter, from Haringey, London, who sustained more than 50 injuries and died aged 17 months at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger. He had 60 contacts with the authorities over eight months.

Khyra Ishaq died in May 2008 when her body succumbed to an infection after months of starvation at her home in Handsworth, Birmingham. It emerged that Birmingham City Council was aware of concerns about the child's welfare almost five months before her death. Schoolgirl Shannon Matthews was kidnapped and hidden by her own mother Karen Matthews in an attempt to claim thousands of pounds in reward money in February 2008. Karen Matthews was jailed for her part in the kidnapping, along with her former partner's uncle, Michael Donovan.

In January, two brothers were jailed for an "appalling and terrible" attack on two boys, then aged nine and 11, in Edlington, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

The case of the brothers, who were aged 10 and 11 at the time, provoked widespread criticism of agencies involved with the family in Doncaster and a report following the sentencing revealed that the attack could have been prevented.

It was announced in the new Government's coalition agreement that the findings of serious case reviews will be published in the future.

Publication will be subject to certain tests, including ensuring youngsters remain anonymous, the welfare of the child will not be harmed and the reports are appropriately redacted. Reviews relating to Baby P will be released first.

9:

Natalee Holloway suspect arrested in Chile over Peru murder

Dutch man also faces US charges of trying to extort money from family of teenager who disappeared from Aruba in 2005.Dutch man who was the main suspect in the disappearance of an American teenager on a Caribbean island five years ago has been arrested over the killing of a woman in Peru.

Joran van der Sloot has also been charged separately in the US with trying to extort money from the family of the missing teenager, Natalee Holloway, in exchange for information on her whereabouts.

He was arrested in Chile and deported to Peru today for allegedly murdering Stephany Flores Ramirez, 21, in Lima.

Van der Sloot, 22, was in Peru for a poker tournament and met Flores at a casino. She was found with a broken neck in a hotel room registered to him. She died on Sunday but her corpse was only discovered by a cleaner on Tuesday.

The body was found fully clothed and the head of Peru's criminal police, General Cesar Guardia, told Associated Press there were no signs that she had been sexually abused, adding that no murder weapon was found and that there was no immediate evidence of a motive. "It's probable they had drunken alcohol," said Guardia.

Van der Sloot then paid a lorry driver to take him across the border to Chile where he was finally detained yesterday.

He was arrested for Flores's murder on the same day he was charged in the US with attempting to extort $250,000 (£172,000) over the presumed death of 18-year-old Holloway in Aruba in 2005, for which he remains the primary suspect.

Two years ago, a Dutch reporter secretly filmed Van der Sloot saying he was with Holloway when she collapsed drunk on a beach. He is then shown saying that he believed she was dead and that he asked a friend to dump her body in the sea.

But Holloway was never found and the Aruban authorities did not prosecute, to the outrage of her family which blamed the political connections of the Dutch man's father, who was a judge on the island.

Prosecutors have accused Van der Sloot of demanding money in return for revealing the location of Holloway's body and how she died. A partial payment of $15,000 was sent to a bank in the Netherlands.

Holloway was celebrating her high school graduation in Aruba when she disappeared. Her family lawyer said the arrest in Chile could give new impetus to solving the Aruba case. "If they have enough proof that he committed the crime in Peru, maybe, just maybe that might help to get him to confess in Natalee's case. It just might crack him," said Vinda de Souza.

Her mother, Beth Holloway, issued a statement saying she "extends her deepest sympathy" to the Flores family "and prays for swift and sure justice".

But a New York lawyer who has represented Van der Sloot, Joe Tacopina, said: "Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bullseye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play."